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Gantt charts are very helpful where there is little or no relationship between successive activities or where the times to complete a task have been established. Unfortunately, such ideal conditions do not always exist.
Gantt chart is essentially a bar graph with time on the horizontal axis and the resources to be scheduled on the vertical axis. It is used for scheduling resources, including management system inputs such as human resources and machines. We can illustrate this in Figure 2.2.
Figure 2.2: Work Week Second
Figure 2.2 shows a completed Gantt chart for a work period. The resources scheduled over the five workdays on this chart were the human resources (Ahmed and Ali). During this week, both Ahmed and Ali were supposed to produce 10 units a day. However, the actual production deviated from planned production. There were days when each of the two workers produced more than 10 units, as well as days when each produced fewer than 10 units. Cumulative actual production for workweek shows that Ahmed produced 40 units and Ali produced 45 units over the five days.
Features: Although simple in concept and appearance, the Gantt chart has many valuable managerial uses, these are:
First: managers can use it as a summary overview of how organizational resources are being employed.
Second: from it, you can detect such facts as which resources are consistently contributing to productivity and which are hindering it.
Third: managers can use the Gantt chart to help coordinate organizational resources. The chart can show which resources are not being used during specific periods, thereby allowing managers to schedule those resources for work on other production efforts.
Fourth: the chart can be used to establish realistic worker output standards.
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